"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, the glory of kings to search it out."
Musings on our world from a Trinitarian view

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Test #1, Middle Ages

I'm afraid I don't feel like typing in the questions, but here are the answers to the things you didn't know that you didn't know (unless you knew the latter, in which case the former doesn't apply, whereas if you knew the former, the latter remains valid).

12). This one first, as I’m afraid that there’s a typo: line three should read “great mead-hall,” not “great mean-hall” (my spell-checker hates it too). It is of course Beowulf, and is the old section of Beowulf. I subscribe to the belief that there are two separate authors of Beowulf: the old oral tradition complete with Beowulf killing Grendelet mater familias, and the more recent section of Beowulf ruling his kingdom and killing a dragon, which was most likely composed as an elegy upon the death of a king. This sample is speaking of Hrothgar as he is deciding to build Heorot, which is later besieged by Grendel, who likes his Dane snacks raw. Heorot itself is significant in part due to the high demands of hospitality of the time. Due to the fact that Napoleon Buonaparte moved his army in roughly the same manner and speed that Αλεχανδρος Μαγνος of Macedon did 2,000 years earlier, anyone traveling between the two would need to stop frequently, and a “castle” of the type of Heorot, complete with gallons of mead, all the fresh meat you could want and a king with a reputation as a generous “ring-giver” would be viewed by ancient travelers the way my father-in-law views any Best Western with an Olive Garden across the street: life’s too short for bad motels and cheap food. This in turn would cause his own fame to spread even farther and wider than it already was, which would be a huge boon to him, for what king doesn’t like to be revered? And what great king doesn’t hope to go down in history?

8). To follow suit, I shall continue with the much maligned Bear (Beo=bee and Wulf=hunter, therefore the delightful kenning “Beowulf” is a way of saying “Bear,” which seems peculiarly apt for a man with the strength of twenty men in each hand). This passage is describing the demon-spawn Grendel, who not only kills the Danes, which is bad enough, but can’t be got at to pay for them, which is simply intolerable. It reminds me of the Far Side where the indignant parents are saying to the witch “Let me get this straight: we hired you to babysit our children for the night, and you cooked and ate both of them?” One of the big issues with Grendel is that he refused to pay the blood-price for the people that he ate (though we don’t really have the impression that he was asked; those that could speak to him typically had other things on their mind. Like his teeth.). In this culture, unexpected death was more prevalent and long life more uncertain than today, so if a man was killed by accident or intent, the killer could be held liable for the “blood-price” of the victim, money to be paid to the family, typically collected by those responsible for them. In this case, the responsible person would often be Hrothgar, so his inability to collect the blood-price from Grendel was a great dishonor to him.

5). This is a quote from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which Gawain is put into a rather awkward position. He is commanded to stay at home by his host, and then the host goes hunting while his wife attempts to seduce Gawain. Gawain gets to try not to offend her while also attempting not to end up sleeping with her, the latter of obviously greater import than the former. His courtesy is a mark of his great worth as a knight, and his ability to avoid either being rude to or sleeping with the naked chick that keeps climbing into bed with him is quite impressive.

10). Another from the unknown genius behind Gawain, this time describing the five-pointed star on the shield of Gawain. It is described both as a Celtic knot and as a memorial of the golden age of Israel under Solomon, both a Christ figure and the wisest king ever to have lived. This link between ancient Judaism and “modern” Christianity is quite interesting: the Christian theologians from Paul through the present maintain that Christianity is the fulfillment of the Old Testament’s faithful Judaism, while the Jews maintain (from AD 70 and particularly AD 94) that the Christian goyim (גימ) are wholly separate from them and especially accursed due to their inactivity during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Herodian temple (often considered to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world). The five points represent a number of things, including two lists straight out of the Roman Catholic Church. This further demonstrates the thorough Christianity/Catholicism of the Medieval British world.

2). This selection and selection 15 are both from Malory’s MorteDarthur, which was a compilation of various stories of (usually) unknown authorship. This is one of our only sections in prose, due to the earlier works having to have been memorized. This also contributes greatly to the more minute focus in particular of the metaphysical poets over and against the great epic scope of the previous poets: when precision is possible, spending two hours debating which word to use is justifiable, but when the next Philistine to get his grubby hands on your work is just going to forget or change it, the exact sound isn’t quite so essential. This is rather a tragic statement of Arthur’s. He is fully correct in realizing that, while his Guinevere was “expendable” to his court and way of life, Lancelot (and the many knights that went with him) was not. He is not saying that his wife is useless in comparison or anything like that; he is recognizing the death of a golden era, and the future proves him horrifically correct.

6). When dealing with this translation of Geoffrey Chaucer, I think it best to start by interpreting. So here’s a new translation (rough and neither versified or metered):

Nevertheless, while I have time and space, Before I go any further with my story, I think it would be good to talk, And tell you all the circumstances Of each of the people (or at least how they appeared): Which ones, what rank And what kind of order, And with a knight will I begin.

I’m also not entirely sure how to explain the significance of this to the rest of the text. Chaucer is simply explaining what he’s going to do before he does it. So, it does inform us that there’s an omniscient narrator, but that’s no surprise. Further yet, I’m not entirely certain why Chaucer started with the knight, though, as all of this is speculation anyway, I would guess that it’s due to his massive genius when it came to human psychology. He was writing when the knight was already a type that was becoming obsolete: the cities and the merchant classes that arose in them were undermining the feudal order. The increased population increased the possibility of travel and trade, and for the first time, people had a real chance to actually improve their own lot in life, to grab their bootstraps and pull hard. So as the knights were fading, the idealism about them was arising, and thus Chaucer begins with them, as Cooper began with the frontier and good old Louis began with the Wild West: the reality had just passed, and therefore it must have been better than what we have now.

13). Everyman, the earliest extant copy of which dates to 1530, has delightful lines and is about as subtle and covert as a Mormon missionary (it’s the nametags and backpacks that give them away). It’s about you (hence the title). It’s about the future. It’s like a (far superior) precursor to Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames, and the fact that it’s actually effective is enough to drive even a Christian hedonist such as myself to nihilism. In it, each thing in life is stripped of all possible worth and revealed to be hollow and worthless in the light of eternity. Which is a valuable lesson, yes, and is something that our filthy rich American drama queen generation could stand to learn a bit more thoroughly than we have as of yet, yes. I know. But life is good, meat is tasty, and mud between the toes is a perfect refutation of any Gnostic asceticism that I’ve yet found. Anyway, this is worldly goods announcing that they tend to destroy men’s souls; that men belong to them and not the other way around. Men are transitory, but the wealth goes on unchanged; wealth is the redwood tree in the forest, and the men that “possess” it are nothing more than a slight flavor on the air. If goods save one man, they destroy a thousand, and we can’t take them with us.

7). This, the first line of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, is presented by our Norton Anthology as a pro-feminist line, immediately after it presents Chaucer, the author of the line, as a product of his misogynistic culture. Which I, at least, find entertaining. But I don’t typically look too deeply for meanings in things like this: when Mark Twain says he doesn’t want any of that nonsense about the Mississippi representing life, I tend to take it at face value, regardless of what modern interpreters have done to “correct” his meaning. Today’s critics and translators seem to be afflicted with some type of chronological snobbery and spend half their time “improving” works that they can’t even understand. And I won’t even start on filmmakers. I think this is quite as simple as it sounds: even if there were no authority in this world, this woman’s experience gives her the right to speak of marriage. The passage that follows is highly ironic, quite cynical, and contains a wry wisdom that Chaucer gives to this foolish woman, allowing her to both confirm and satirize her judges. Personally, I think he kinda liked her. In any case, he was probably closer to Donne in his fondness for the ladies than we tend to think of him, and Donne seems to have inherited some of his wry cynicism that is delivered with either entirely too much asperity or (at times) overt joviality to be easily mistaken for a mordant bitterness.

RefTagger

Book log: fiction

Chesterton: Manalive: slightly inferior to The Man Who Was Thursday, but only very slightly, and it is most definitely worth reading. Very short, very, very good.

McCarthy: The Road: Very dark, very descriptive. Without giving anything away, it is a father and son traveling through a post-apocalyptic world (horrifically reminiscent of Mordor). Pretty good.

Tolkein: Lord of the Rings: Words fail me. Somewhere around my fifth time through, I simply died. These books are true, in a very profound sense of the word.

Lewis: Chronicles of Narnia: Books that, as Frank Churchill said of Emma's fiancee, "I would not presume to praise". Read them. Repeat as necessary. It's necessary far more often than you might think.

Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday: I Read this one in two days. Just great, and despite his disclaimer, I still consider the large man to be somewhat like God. Thrilling read.

Dorothy Dunnett: Lymond Chronicles: easier to start than the Niccolo books, and only six in this series. What can I say? I consider Dunnett to be the best taleweaver that I have ever read, and would be hard pressed to change my mind. If you read no other books (other than Tolkein, Chesterton and Lewis), read these. You will be amazed.

Dorothy Dunnett: House of Niccolo: The first book in this series of eight took me three attempts to get through. When I did, I was astonished. I didn't pick up a book by any other author for about six months. This is one of the best series that I have ever read. Historical fiction, and absolutely world-class. These books will be around five-hundred years from now.

Lewis: Space Trilogy: Just great. That Hideous Strength started in the typical British nothing-is-allowed-to-occur-in-the-first-fifty-pages manner, but then never really lets up. "It's very shark?!"

Tolkien: Unfinished Tales: As brilliant as I expected from the master. Dostoevsky would have loved Narn I Hin Hurin. I did.

Hugo: Les Miserables: Great stories. Yes, that was plural intentionally. Read the bloody abridged version if you don't want twenty pages on the sewer systems of Paris and forty on Waterloo with no relevance to the story. Was he paid by the word, with a bonus for pointlessness? Still, if you can make it past his desperate and rambling tweakeresque garrulousness, a very worthwhile and surprisingly uplifting read.

Poetry

T. S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral: there is no excuse for not owning this and knowing it at least passably. It is an absolute delight to read; one of the best books I have ever read, the best play that I have ever read.

John Donne: Complete Poems and Selected Prose: His Holy Sonnets are just great. His love poems are generally very good, with a sting in the tail. Prose has interesting titles: "That Women Ought to Paint ... A Defense of Women's Inconstancy ... Why Hath the Common Opinion Afforded Women Soules?" and so on. Very worthwhile.

G. K. Chesterton: The Ballad of the White Horse: "We know he saw athwart the wreck The sign that hangs about your neck Where one more than Melchizedeck Is dead and never dies." How did I live over two decades without reading this? The heavens are opened, and I am forever lost. Magnificent. About King Alfred.

Eliot: Four Quartets: Magnificent and evocative. I understood little, but loved what I understood. He is somewhat of an acquired taste, but very worth acquiring.

T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land: Eccentricy is like an accent--it's what the other person has. Eliot is not eccentric, but insane. This book is brilliant. I think. Hard to tell, really. If his target readers were humans, I don't think that I've met them. I've read this shy of twenty times, and am no nearer to understanding it than the third time (when I successfully translated the German).

C. S. Lewis: Poems: If you don't own this, repent and buy it. Read it with caution, as he didn't even agree with everything he wrote, but for the love of God, read it.

C. S. Lewis: Spirits in Bondage: He published this at the ripe old age of nineteen. Had God not saved Him, he would have been damned with a vengeance. This book is a mixture of screams at God and escapist longings. Brilliant, and very worth reading over and over. Even when he is wrong (the whole bloody book) he is beautifully wrong.

Alexander Pope: Essay on Man: First read when I was sixteen, and I cannot stay away from it. Shattering to any semblance of pride, and taught me more about the Sovereignty of God than I have learned since. Easy read, and immensely worthwhile.

Book Log: non-fiction.

Calvin: Institutes: Wow. Twenty-seven? If I didn't know I was reading his thirty-somethingth revision, I would commit suicide. Brilliant. Absolutely worldclass; a must read.

Leithart: House for my Name: Magnificent information, prose is somewhat thick. Worth working through it the way that Owen is worth the effort. Just astonishing, and the prose isn't at all bad, just not great.

David Hunt: What Love Is This? This is Hunt's critique of Calvinism. Except where he says what Calvinists believe, I agree with the entire book. He says that we believe heresies, and are therefore heretics. Don't know that he ever met a Calvinist, though he does once get a position right--there will be people in hell because God didn't save them. Funny how that's just kinda the position of all orthodox Christians. He would have failed my rhetoric class. Loaded questions, straw man arguments, fallacies of distraction; I had expected better. Oh well.

Tom Wolfe: From Bauhaus to Our House: quite informative and effective. If you're interested in architecture, it will thrill you. If not, do what I did: read it like a sleeping pill.

P. J. O'Rourke: All the Trouble in the World: "Sorry Al (Gore), for calling you a fascist twinkie and intellectual dolt. It's nothing personal. I just think you have repulsive totalitarian inclinations and the brains of a King Charles Spaniel." That was from the intro. The book is hilarious and very informative (particularly on famines), but with reservations. There is cussing (though quite sporadic) and a few inappropriate spots. Worth reading, but probably not more than once.

Aristotle: On Rhetoric: Brilliant, the way a sewer system is brilliant: well thought out, well designed, but you wouldn't want to spend a lot of time there.

Plato: Gorgias: Very interesting, but shows the fundamental flaw in the highest form of humanistic altruism that can be found: it operates from the assumption that good deeds almost always give pleasure to the doer, and people are fully capable of doing good deeds. The problem is captured, at least partly, by Tozer: "as water can never rise higher than its source, neither can deeds be purer than the motives that cause them" or something to that effect. If you are doing good for the sake of pleasure, the day will come when there will be no pleasure in it. Good must be done for the pleasure of another, and the only way to know that what gives the other one pleasure is actually good is if that other one is God, Good Himself.

How to Read a Book: Ignoring the fact that if you didn't know how to read a book this should be the last book for you to pick up, if you actually followed the advice of this book, you might read another hundred books in your lifetime. Extremely impractical, though some worthwhile information in it.

How to Read Slowly: read it fast, or not at all.

Cicero: Ad Herrenium: Quite good. Frightening in places, as one of the world's greatest orators of all time is telling you how to manipulate massive numbers of people to do your bidding. Leaves you thinking the FBI should track the people who buy this book, not those who make pipe-bombs.